The 23,000 people currently enrolled in the plan will have to withdraw from the program and sign up for the health care programs offered by the federal Affordable Care Act before the pool officially closes on Jan. 1 of next year.

Since 1998, the pool charged high prices to Texans with pre-existing conditions to obtain insurance they can’t get elsewhere. But because the Affordable Care Act prohibits price discrimination for pre-existing conditions in the new health insurance marketplace, the state ruled the pool is now “obsolete,” according to the Tribune.

People in the pool will have until Dec. 15 to find a new form of insurance, whether that’s signing up for the federal exchange or seeking it elsewhere before the deadline comes.

Texas is among several states that have resisted the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, but because the law has been passed and upheld in Congress and the Supreme Court, states are now offering exchanges through the federal program. Republicans in Texas have launched a crusade to defund the law, leading to the 16-day government shutdown that ended yesterday.

Perry called forcing Obamacare on the nation was “a criminal act.”

But Texas remains the leader in the number of uninsured people — in 2012, 6 million people were without health insurance, including some 852,000 children.

The Obamacare exchanges signed into law in 2010 officially opened for business Oct. 1, but are wrought with technological failures from an overloaded infrastructure system.